Wine About It: Off to Napa Valley!

I’ve never been to Napa Valley before, so I’m extremely excited about this opportunity. Even though I know basically nothing about wine (except how to drink a lot of it), I’ve wanted to head out to the valley for a long time. When HomeAway reached out to me about coming to the race as part of their press team, I jumped at the chance!

Yes, I can agree to this.

HomeAway is a travel accommodations company that helps homeowners rent out their properties to travelers around the globe! HomeAway is the parent company for VRBO and VacationRentals.com, among other similar companies, and they have the largest selection of rental vacation accommodations in the world! We’ll be staying in one of the gorgeous Sonoma properties on their website, which will make race day super convenient!

The inside of our house!

While we typically tend to think of host hotels as the easiest option for destination race accommodations, that isn’t always the case. In some situations, the host hotels sell out immediately, are outrageously expensive, or perhaps have minimum stay requirement that doesn’t work for you. If you’re traveling with a bunch of friends or family members, it’s fun to be able to all stay together, too! I’ve stayed in vacation rentals several times for races, including my trips to Alaska for the Mayor’s Marathon and Colorado for the Aspen Valley Marathon, and ended up saving a ton of money in the process.

Spoiler alert: not the inside of a hotel

I can’t wait to experience the beauty of Napa and Sonoma! The race is a point to point course that runs from Napa to Sonoma, and it’s got a slight net downhill. This was part of my motivation for last week’s long run – it suddenly occurred to me that I should probably run for longer than an hour at some point if I’m planning on finishing this half marathon in one piece! There’s also a 5k option, so this would be an amazing destination race for running buddies of all abilities and paces, since it is walker friendly. Oh, did I mention there’s a wine stop along the course?!

YES. YES YES YES.

So, I can’t wait to show you everything from Napa this weekend! Follow me on Instagram, where I’ll be posting tons of stories and daily photos. I’m planning on posting updates from the race course, too, so don’t miss it! There will be vineyards, there will be wine, there will be cheese, and there will be racing! I can’t wait to share it all with you.

3 thoughts on “Wine About It: Off to Napa Valley!”

We’ve made use of HomeAway and VRBO several times – I tend to prefer NOT staying in hotels when we vacation. Great opportunity for you to get hooked up through them!

I think this is an opportunity for Corning as well – they definitely have the issue where the Wineglass Marathon happens during peak foliage season, the end of NASCAR race season for Watkins Glen, and a bunch of end-season wine events. So getting hotels can be a real pain. I have never looked to see what is available for places – though I know some people found lake-front rentals at decent prices. Seems like a great opportunity!

Because I spent my pre-Corning career in semiconductors, that meant making many, many trips to the entire Bay Area. I had two many companies I collaborated with – one in San Jose, the other in Fremont. And two conferences I attended annually, one in San Francisco and the other in Santa Clara. So I would have a minimum of two trips per year, and especially before kids came I would extend a bit to take in the sights. And one of my best friends from high school and college lives just outside of Santa Clara, so I would visit them once a year. Definitely an area I would not mind living …

Yes, sometimes hotels are insanely hard to find because that tends to be where people’s minds go first. I think it makes a lot of sense to rent a house for a race, especially if you are traveling with a group of friends. It’s also nice to have control over your food and your expenses, to some degree!